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1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.1.1Degreedhttps://feedburner.google.comThank You for Sharing: The Next Generation of Extended Enterprise Learninghttps://blog.degreed.com/thank-you-for-sharing-the-next-generation-of-extended-enterprise-learning/
https://blog.degreed.com/thank-you-for-sharing-the-next-generation-of-extended-enterprise-learning/#respondThu, 21 Mar 2019 17:28:11 +0000https://blog.degreed.com/?p=29245Degreed Product Insider is a monthly peek under the hood to make sure you’re getting the most out of your Degreed experience. Back in the day, we were all taught to share, whether it was a new toy, afterschool TV time, or the last piece of cake. Today, sharing has become a new business model. […]

]]>Degreed Product Insider is a monthly peek under the hood to make sure you’re getting the most out of your Degreed experience.

Back in the day, we were all taught to share, whether it was a new toy, afterschool TV time, or the last piece of cake. Today, sharing has become a new business model. We see people sharing their cars on Lyft, their homes on Airbnb, and the details of their lives on social media. That mindset is even spilling over into the corporate side of the business with extended enterprise learning.

Extended enterprise learning is a hot topic in the L&D industry — and for good reason. Successfully upskilling your customers, partners, and distributors is linked to increased revenue and decreased costs, according to a Brandon Hall Group survey on the topic. Because of this, about one-third of organizations have extended enterprise learning programs. Some LMS companies provide functionality to enable extended enterprise, but they are often nascent and secondary.

There are, however, no Learning Experience Platforms that provide this capability — until today. We put on our black turtleneck and mom jeans so we can welcome you to the brave new world of extended enterprise learning on Degreed. With our recently released suite of capabilities, you can now usher your extended enterprise programs into the next generation.

“This will take extended enterprise learning to the next generation.”

-David Mallon, Chief Analyst, Bersin

So What Is Extended Enterprise Learning Anyway?

Extended enterprise learning is the ability to share your learning programs with both your internal audiences and your external audiences, eg: making your Degreed Pathways and Pages available to clients, vendors, partners, and others. To ensure you’re spreading the wealth the right way, check out a few of our favorite use cases for extended enterprise learning:

Extend learning beyond employees: Don’t hold back. Extend learning to external stakeholders and non-employees such as customers, partners, resellers, or suppliers. Building these external groups is a significant competitive advantage. One learning leader at Koch Industries said, “Our distributors sell competitor products as well, so the goal is to get mindshare.”

Increase learning across the employee lifecycle: Offer to preboard. Get your new hires a head start by providing orientation before their start dates. You can also offer résumé, interview, or networking tips to alumni employees to help them stay sharp for their next move.

Ensure your network of companies operates under a corporate umbrella: Teamwork makes the dream work. A global professional services firm is launching multiple organizations (aka “tenants”) within Degreed, that can use separate branding, settings, and permissions for each. Each tenant also has its own L&D team that manages the site for their audience, plus a Global L&D team that shares content across all member organizations. These organizations maintain their own catalog of content, including global content that headquarters shares across all the member organizations. For this use case, we allow social sharing among the sites, so employees at one organization can follow, recommend to, and interact with other employees at other organizations.

Make learning a business: Better together. Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning is using Degreed’s extended enterprise capabilities to deliver their catalog of 15,000+ leadership and management learning resources to their clients using Degreed as the content delivery platform. This allows Harvard Business Publishing to focus on what they do best: create amazing content while leveraging the most engaging Learning Experience Platform.

What Does Extended Enterprise Learning Look Like in Degreed?

It’s definitely easier than saying “extended enterprise learning” five times fast. Degreed provides an integrated tool to allow you to easily manage multiple organizations from one central site management console. With Degreed you can:

Manage organizations: If you have distinct populations of users that need to be separate from other users for privacy, security or administrative purposes, you can create and manage multiple organizations within Degreed from this tool.

Manage content: Content can be shared across these organizations or walled off.

Manage users: Users in each organization can be walled off from each other or enabled to socially interact based on your chosen configuration.

Manage Configurations: Organizations can have unique branding or shared branding. Integrations and configurations can be customized for each organization. This solution is flexible with a bunch of options to meet the needs of each use case.

Extended Enterprise Learning: To Infinity and Beyond

If you’re looking for a next-generation learning solution for your extended enterprise program, Degreed has the answer. You get all of the Degreed goodness for your external audiences, plus easy tools to manage it all. That means: personalized recommendations, gamification, learning in the flow of work, the content aggregated from any source, and an amazing search, for your employees and now for your customers, partners, vendors, and beyond. Looking to see extended enterprise learning in action? If you’re already a Degreed client, contact your Degreed rep today for a demo. Not yet using Degreed? Sign up for a demo here.

]]>https://blog.degreed.com/thank-you-for-sharing-the-next-generation-of-extended-enterprise-learning/feed/0Degreed Does Data: Machine Learninghttps://blog.degreed.com/degreed-does-data-machine-learning/
https://blog.degreed.com/degreed-does-data-machine-learning/#respondTue, 19 Mar 2019 00:37:58 +0000https://blog.degreed.com/?p=29224Data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence are disrupting everything we know, in ways that most of us don’t understand — yet. To help you keep up, we’ve launched a new series, Degreed Does Data. We’ll dive deep into these topics, simplify their complexities, explain their potential impact, and break down the dramatic ways they’ll change […]

]]>Data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence are disrupting everything we know, in ways that most of us don’t understand — yet. To help you keep up, we’ve launched a new series, Degreed Does Data. We’ll dive deep into these topics, simplify their complexities, explain their potential impact, and break down the dramatic ways they’ll change the industry.

Today, we’re handling a hot one: machine learning. Information — on just about everything — has never been more available. It’s what makes machine learning so valuable and necessary. So what is it? Why do companies need to start paying attention to it? And how can these same companies leverage its capabilities?

What is Machine Learning?

Definition: training a software program with examples, experiments, or experiences, so that it can recognize patterns, make predictions, and complete tasks.

Now that computers can handle and process such huge amounts of information, machine learning allows us to connect the dots in ways that we never could. We can drive down thousands of streets with computer vision, while our cars see the entire road at all times. By the same token, our phones can understand anything from Albanian to Zulu after analyzing billions of soundbites using natural language processing.

What’s most exciting is that machine learning is still in its infancy — despite being this century’s most important breakthrough in artificial intelligence. Its capabilities and the doors it can open will only continue to grow — and not in the robots-are-taking-over kind of way.

Machine Learning Applied

This begs the question, how do companies adapt to keep up with machine learning? Maybe they hire software engineers to replace their truck drivers with autonomous vehicles. Or re-train their international sales team with language learning apps tailored to each person’s strengths and weaknesses. Additionally, companies can leverage machine learning algorithms to boost efficiency and streamline processes for everything from research and development to sales to marketing.

Of course, the smartest approach is comprehensive, especially in the L&D world. By applying all the necessary elements of machine learning, company learning can vastly improve, leading to more informed, data-driven decisions. In a nutshell, L&D needs software that helps the right people learn the right things at the right time.

Machine learning can also predict what skills will be in demand. From there, it can suggest what workers should learn and identify which resources are most effective. One of machine learning’s greatest attributes is automatically offering relevant mini-lessons to help employees with any tasks or goals they’re working on, ensuring they’re continuously ahead of the curve. We see this with IBM Watson Career Coach, which fosters employee engagement and guides careers. By using Career Coach, IBM employees can get their skill-sets analyzed, as well as receiving career recommendations and relevant upskilling suggestions.

Asking your SaaS Vendors about Machine Learning

What exactly can this system do with machine learning?

Some vendors are trying to hide behind the hype of machine learning. Their software is not evolving and only lists “recommended” content. That’s fine if you’re mindlessly binging TV shows — we’re finally all caught up on Game of Thrones — but it’s not enough in the learning context. True machine learning gives you a platform that understands its unique users, strengthens its own weaknesses, and adapts to trends that it discovers. There’s no need to settle for recommendations.

How has machine learning already changed your work?

Yes, machine learning is the future, but it’s also the present. The most agile competitors are already applying these technologies in every industry. Even DIY tinkerers have figured out new uses for machine learning. What your organization needs are tools that keep everyone ahead of the latest learning trends. This ensures your vendor understands how your industry is changing and can explain how they’ll help you adapt.

Which types of machine learning does your software use?

You should know two main approaches: supervised learning means the program trains with data that humans already sorted out, following directions until it sees the pattern for itself. Unsupervised learning takes off the training wheels, so the system runs through unclassified data while finding connections and creating its own categories.

How much data is required for machine learning to be useful?

People usually underestimate how much data they need. In the case of machine learning, more is always better. Even 100,000 records are hardly enough. The machine can only predict based on the data it has. To catch fraud, banks must track data on each transaction — location, currency, credit history, and more.

Similarly, learning systems can only predict relevant content if they’re tracking the right user data — interests, social network accounts, or learning history. Once you have millions of these examples to train your system, it becomes clear what success looks like and your algorithm will reach its potential.

]]>https://blog.degreed.com/degreed-does-data-machine-learning/feed/0Developing Skills at the Speed of Nowhttps://blog.degreed.com/developing-skills-at-the-speed-of-now/
https://blog.degreed.com/developing-skills-at-the-speed-of-now/#respondSat, 16 Mar 2019 12:40:09 +0000https://blog.degreed.com/?p=29180On March 28th at 2 pm ET, we’re teaming up with Dan Pontefract, leadership strategist, author, and CEO of The Pontefract Group to discuss his experience leveraging, understanding, and addressing the talent gap.

]]>On March 28th at 2 pm ET, we’re teaming up with Dan Pontefract, leadership strategist, author, and CEO of The Pontefract Group to discuss his experience leveraging, understanding, and addressing the talent gap.

]]>https://blog.degreed.com/developing-skills-at-the-speed-of-now/feed/0The Next Evolution of Degreedhttps://blog.degreed.com/the-evolution-of-degreed/
https://blog.degreed.com/the-evolution-of-degreed/#respondThu, 14 Mar 2019 02:55:29 +0000https://blog.degreed.com/?p=29183One of the coolest things about working at a startup is seeing how flexible and creative a company can be. Degreed has changed and grown extensively over the last seven years. We started out as a place for individuals to learn whatever they wanted. Then we expanded to also help companies train and up-skill their […]

]]>One of the coolest things about working at a startup is seeing how flexible and creative a company can be. Degreed has changed and grown extensively over the last seven years. We started out as a place for individuals to learn whatever they wanted. Then we expanded to also help companies train and up-skill their employees in a user-driven experience. Now, we’re taking our technology even further.

We’re excited to announce a partnership with Harvard Business Publishing where the newest version of their Harvard ManageMentor® Spark will be powered by the Degreed platform.

What does this look like?

Degreed’s core business has always been technology. We pride ourselves on offering an incredible, user-friendly platform that allows people to take control of their learning. We’re honored and excited that after a thorough and thoughtful analysis of all the major learning experience platforms, the Harvard Business Publishing team selected Degreed as the platform for the next release of Harvard ManageMentor Spark.

Users of Harvard ManageMentorSpark’s powerful leadership development content will notice that though its core learning materials have not changed, the technology has. Through this partnership, Harvard ManageMentor Spark will have much of the same functionality as Degreed’s stand-alone platform, under the Harvard ManageMentor Spark branding and design.

Is this a new business line for Degreed?

This is the first time we’ve extended our personalized learning and skill measurement technologies to a content publisher. Given the alignment between our two companies in focusing on skill development and lifelong learning, we would use the same guiding criteria to guide future strategic opportunities.

For now, we are very excited to watch as this partnership develops to bring Harvard ManageMentor Spark’s management and leadership skills development resources together with Degreed’s best-in-class learning platform. It’s sure to be a winning combination!

To learn more about the partnership, please read our joint press release here.

]]>https://blog.degreed.com/the-evolution-of-degreed/feed/0Degreed Does Data: Data Sciencehttps://blog.degreed.com/introduction-to-data-science-learning-development/
https://blog.degreed.com/introduction-to-data-science-learning-development/#respondThu, 14 Feb 2019 13:18:43 +0000https://blog.degreed.com/?p=28927Data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence are disrupting everything we know, in ways that most of us don’t understand — yet. To help you keep up, we’re launching a new series, Degreed Does Data. We’ll dive deep into these topics, simplifying their complexities, explaining their potential impact, and breaking down the dramatic ways they’ll be […]

]]>Data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence are disrupting everything we know, in ways that most of us don’t understand — yet. To help you keep up, we’re launching a new series, Degreed Does Data. We’ll dive deep into these topics, simplifying their complexities, explaining their potential impact, and breaking down the dramatic ways they’ll be changing the industry.

You can always find the details in the data. It’s a big reason why data science is such a necessity these days. So what is it? And why is it so important nowadays?

What is Data Science?

Today we can access infinitely more information than ever before. People are constantly interacting through the internet and countless smart devices are tracking every bit of our world. We call these movements and activities “data.”

To give you an idea of just how much data is out there, 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created every single day. The most interesting (or scary!) part? Over 90 percent of the data in the world was generated in just the last 2 years.

But more data does not necessarily mean more knowledge. Enter data science. Data science is the key to understanding all this new information in meaningful ways.

Data Science Applied

Data science combines three areas of expertise: business knowledge, statistical analysis, and computer science. A skillful data scientist uses their business knowledge to understand a problem, applies statistical techniques to collect data and model solutions, and writes programs to run their analysis and generate results.

Data science is how Google, Facebook, and Amazon became successful. They studied searches, similarities, friendships, and purchases to find patterns that led to profits.

Sports teams have used data science to devise Moneyball tactics to hit more home runs and three-pointers. It has even made us safer and healthier because data scientists have crunched numbers that detect fraud and disease.

Data science is a hot topic in learning, too, and for good reason. Employees use the web and mobile devices along with HR and business applications to get smarter, and in the process, they are generating valuable data on things like their preferences, their habits, and new or improving skills. Do not waste this data! Using a learning platform that makes intelligent use of data science, your organization can understand who is learning what, which resources are most helpful, and how employees are progressing.

Asking your Saas Vendors about Data Science

So what should you do about all this? Well, for starters, start asking more questions. Here’s a few to get you started:

How is data collected, stored, and secured with this solution?

Data science is useless without databases, but those databases must have integrity. Ask how the information is gathered; make sure users have given consent if required. Once the data is collected, it must be maintained and kept fresh. Find out how databases are kept reliable and up-to-date. Of course, don’t forget to keep the data safe, by talking through specifics security threats and privacy protections.

What predictive models have data scientists built using this tool?

One core function of data science is prediction. With enough relevant information about the past and present, data scientists can forecast the future. Methods like regression analysis and neural nets use statistics to study the relationships between variables. For example, data science can predict how costs will change, when products will wear out, or what trends will become popular. When considering data science tools, make sure to find out what predictions it can make reliably.

How does data visualization help users and admins analyze their learning?

Data can be hard to digest. Tables filled with numbers? Equations stuffed with variables? Most of us don’t understand these things. But many data scientists are using data visualization to get ideas across. Creativity and beauty can completely change our understanding, helping us take in more information and clearly see how it all relates. When shopping for or evaluating a learning solution, make sure it offers elegant, intuitive displays of the data, so you can spot the trends instantly.

Now that you know getting warmed up, stay tuned for the next installment in our data series: machine learning.

Learn More about Data Science

Ready to dig deeper into data science? Check out the resources below. Before you know it, you’ll be speaking data fluently.

]]>Tenaris is a global manufacturer and supplier of steel pipes and related services, primarily for the energy industry, employing 22,000 people in 30 countries. One of Tenaris’ key goals is continuous improvement via sharing knowledge company-wide. With this in mind, Tenaris launched TenarisUniversity as its central corporate learning structure to create a cohesive, well-onboarded workforce. Fourteen years have passed since the launch of TU and company learning has largely become digitized, leaving Tenaris in need of an upgrade. Since working with Degreed, Tenaris has been able to innovate its learning processes to match these shifts.

]]>https://blog.degreed.com/tenaris-university-re-engineering-learning-to-drive-innovation-case-study-inside/feed/0Degreed is Bringing Europe a New Language: Skillshttps://blog.degreed.com/degreed-is-bringing-europe-a-new-language-skills/
https://blog.degreed.com/degreed-is-bringing-europe-a-new-language-skills/#respondTue, 05 Feb 2019 20:46:57 +0000https://blog.degreed.com/?p=28875Degreed’s product innovation and growing market presence in Europe was recognized in the 2019 Fosway 9-Grid™ for Learning Systems In 2016, Degreed acquired Gibbon, a pioneer in developing software to curate and share learning resources from across the internet. Based outside Amsterdam, The Netherlands, it was our first big step expanding into Europe. But that […]

]]>Degreed’s product innovation and growing market presence in Europe was recognized in the 2019 Fosway 9-Grid for Learning Systems

In 2016, Degreed acquired Gibbon, a pioneer in developing software to curate and share learning resources from across the internet. Based outside Amsterdam, The Netherlands, it was our first big step expanding into Europe. But that was only the beginning.

Almost three years into our European expansion, Gibbon has blossomed into a fast-growing product, engineering, customer support and sales office (and we’re still hiring!). We also have commercial teams on the ground in the UK, Switzerland and The Netherlands. Degreed now works in dozens of local languages, with a range of native European content sources already integrated. And we just opened a brand new data centre in Germany.

All that focus, investment and effort seem to be working for our clients, too. Degreed’s European client base more than doubled over the last year, and we are closing in on 1 million licensed users all across the region – fast.

So we’re proud and excited that Fosway Group, Europe’s #1 HR industry analysts, just recognized Degreed’s product innovation and growing market presence in the 2019 Fosway 9-Grid for Learning Systems. This latest report advances Degreed’s position from a “Potential Challenger” to a “Core Challenger,” reflecting the strength and capabilities of our solution, our accelerating customer advocacy, and most importantly the impact we’re making for our clients.

David Wilson, CEO of Fosway Group, told us, “Degreed’s increased investment in Europe is clearly being reflected into its increased performance and potential for European customers. Their ranking as a Core Challenger also reflects their innovative approach to learning and skills, as well as greater customer advocacy.”

“We’re investing heavily to build our team, operations and infrastructure in order to meet the unique needs and requirements of European customers. We are honoured that Fosway’s research validates all that work,” said Chris McCarthy, CEO of Degreed. “Our clients want more than just a better learning experience. They’re pushing us to provide sophisticated technology, data and support to keep their people’s skills aligned with their business strategies.”

]]>https://blog.degreed.com/degreed-is-bringing-europe-a-new-language-skills/feed/05 Ways to Create an Exceptional Customer Service Experiencehttps://blog.degreed.com/5-ways-to-create-an-exceptional-customer-service-experience/
https://blog.degreed.com/5-ways-to-create-an-exceptional-customer-service-experience/#respondTue, 05 Feb 2019 20:31:23 +0000https://blog.degreed.com/?p=28873What does a great customer experience look like to you? If you are like most people, you immediately think of personal shopping, technology or travel experience. Shopping at Amazon is fast, easy and with smart recommendations on what else you might need. You might think about Apple and their beautiful products, elegant stores, and a […]

]]>What does a great customer experience look like to you? If you are like most people, you immediately think of personal shopping, technology or travel experience. Shopping at Amazon is fast, easy and with smart recommendations on what else you might need. You might think about Apple and their beautiful products, elegant stores, and a tightly integrated ecosystem. Or you might think about Disney, the highly detailed and immersive travel experience allowing your children to believe in a fantasy.

Now think about the customer experience with enterprise software – can you think of a time when you would say your experience was great?.

At Degreed, we aspire to something far better than the typical enterprise software experience. We aspire to provide you with an experience that not only exceeds your expectations of what our software can do to transform the learning journey in your organization but also provide you with support and a partnership that is second to none. As Chris, our CEO, noted in his year-end summary, Degreed has made a considerable investment in our Client Experience team, all with the goal of creating a truly exceptional experience for our clients.

To deliver this exceptional experience, the first thing we focus on is getting the foundation right.

Hire the right team

There is a lot of work that needs to happen behind the scenes to ensure a seamless customer experience. This starts with ensuring that we hire individuals with a passion for service. That sounds basic enough but it is absolutely essential. For example, I personally interview every candidate for roles on the client experience team to ensure – without exception – my team is focused on service. For reference, we added 30 people to the team last year. We challenge ourselves to not only hire deep experience and expertise (our Engagement team has 10 years of L&D experience on average) but we actively work to hire from diverse backgrounds to constantly challenge our own status quo.

Create great training and processes

With the right people in place, we work hard to train our internal team not only on the Degreed solution but the learning ecosystem as a whole. We use Degreed, as you would expect, to power this learning and have developed pathways for on-boarding and growth. Our internal culture of learning ensures that the latest content and resources are organically shared across the team. Beyond training, we also invest time in ensuring that the handoff between implementation and customer success teams is seamless, that we have strong implementation methodologies augmented with best practice recommendations. These best practices aren’t hopes and dreams, they are tried and true – acquired from years of experience. We specifically designed our resources to allow our team to truly focus on each customer and creating a white-glove experience.

Standing up a disruptive learning technology solution in an enterprise environment can be surprisingly complex. Doing this well would set us apart from most enterprise technology implementations but that’s not what we would consider “a great experience” yet. It doesn’t fully realize our aspiration of exceptional.

Add value

So how do we deliver something more? It’s more than hiring the right service-minded individuals and putting them in a position to be successful with training and smart programs. We want more. And we deliver it. As an example of how we go further, we provide our customers with free services like customer marketing. This is a small dynamic team focused on supporting customers with their own internal marketing of learning to end users. This team provides customers with sample collateral, best practices, hands-on partnership, creative development and swag (everyone loves those socks!) to help our customers deliver high impact launch and change management. As another example, we provide free training including things like the latest insights and exposure to experts in the field so our clients to stay on top of evolving fields like content curation which helps our customers become experts.

Listen and act on feedback

We invest a considerable amount of time in listening to our customers and, most importantly, acting on that feedback to continuously improve our product and services. Twice a year, we facilitate a Client Experience Survey using the Net Promoter Score framework to ask both our L&D partners and end users whether they would recommend Degreed, our services, our product, and our Support.

For each implementation, we survey our L&D partners to ask what worked well and what we could improve upon. For each Support interaction, we ask how we did. But most importantly, we act on this feedback.

As an example, last year our customers told us they wanted better visibility to the Product Roadmap so they could plan right along with Degreed and the future of L&D. Our Product team listened, stepped up, and now not only do we have a customer facing roadmap available but we also host webinars and individuals sessions with customers to share this roadmap. And you guessed it – our clients noticed. In our survey results this year, customers said thank you.

Engage beyond the CX team

Surveys are important but exceptional requires even more. The broader Degreed team including Product, Engineering and Leadership teams actively engage with our customers to listen, learn and then act. Our Chief Product Officer is constantly on the road meeting with customers and listening to inform our roadmap and share our vision for the future of learning. We also facilitate regional user group meetings to get customers together to learn from one another. We facilitate product advisory board meetings and last year we hosted our first annual Client Summit with more than half of our customers attending in person to engage with and learn from one another.

The job is never done…

A moment of honesty. Do we always achieve our aspiration of delivering an exceptional experience? No. There is always more that we can do. In cases where we fall down and don’t deliver the experience we expect, we work hard to quickly course correct, look at root causes and act on feedback to ensure that we are constantly improving and learning from what didn’t work well. Without constant experimentation, without constant learning and growth, we can’t deliver the exceptional experience we aspire to provide.

I am proud to share that our focus on exceptional is working. We have heard, “You set the standard for software vendors” and “Oh, and the Degreed team? They. Are. Everything. The -only- vendor team I’ve ever partnered with that I feel truly cares and always has my back.” Yes, those are direct quotes, and we hear similar anecdotes often. Our customers also recommend us at a level that is consistent with the best in consumer shopping, technology, and travel experience. Our customers continue to partner with Degreed giving us customer retention numbers above 90% and even stronger growth with customers expanding their partnership.

There is always more to do and we will continue to challenge ourselves to go even further we are well on our way to exceptional.

]]>https://blog.degreed.com/5-ways-to-create-an-exceptional-customer-service-experience/feed/0The Innovator’s Guide to Emerging Skillshttps://blog.degreed.com/the-innovators-guide-to-emerging-skills-download/
https://blog.degreed.com/the-innovators-guide-to-emerging-skills-download/#respondTue, 05 Feb 2019 20:30:04 +0000https://blog.degreed.com/?p=28871Organizations across the board are having a hard time filling present skill gaps, let alone making headspace for emerging skills — the skills of the future. There’s no doubt emerging skills will be a critical factor in surviving the disruption caused by automation and digitization. In fact, according to a recent McKinsey Global Institute report, […]

]]>Organizations across the board are having a hard time filling present skill gaps, let alone making headspace for emerging skills — the skills of the future. There’s no doubt emerging skills will be a critical factor in surviving the disruption caused by automation and digitization. In fact, according to a recent McKinsey Global Institute report, 62% percent of executives believe they will need to retrain or replace more than a quarter of their workforce between now and 2023 due to these factors. It’s skill or be skilled out there, so how can you and your company stay ahead?

Here are five things we’ve noticed companies who are the most committed to building emerging skills do differently:

Identifying skills from the ground up

Tap into new skills where they emerge organically

Give experts a platform to spread their knowledge

Give feedback on progress

Mine data to identify emerging skills

The good news? Reskilling is on the radar. A recent McKinsey & Company study showed that 66 percent of executives see addressing potential skills gaps related to automation/digitization within their workforces as a top-ten priority. Nearly 30 percent put it in the top five.

So what are YOU doing about it? For starters, start looking for ways to measure your people’s skill-sets. Then give us 10 minutes and we’ll give you a crash course in emerging skills: what they are, how to build them and how to benchmark your current skills so you can get started on what’s next.

]]>https://blog.degreed.com/the-innovators-guide-to-emerging-skills-download/feed/0A Message From Degreed’s CEO: Year in Review and A Look Aheadhttps://blog.degreed.com/new-year-message-degreed-ceo/
https://blog.degreed.com/new-year-message-degreed-ceo/#respondTue, 29 Jan 2019 20:27:43 +0000https://blog.degreed.com/?p=28869To our clients and partners, On behalf of the entire Degreed team, thank you for an amazing 2018, and for your continued partnership. What we’ve accomplished together in just a short period of time, is incredible. It was just five years ago that a handful of Degreed’s early employees were engaging with many of you […]

On behalf of the entire Degreed team, thank you for an amazing 2018, and for your continued partnership. What we’ve accomplished together in just a short period of time, is incredible. It was just five years ago that a handful of Degreed’s early employees were engaging with many of you for the first time to share our vision for where learning and skill building had to go. That thesis was based on three pillars:

Individual ownership of lifelong learning

A deep partnership with businesses to put employees’ needs at the center of a next-generation learning, skills, and career platform

Working together to create a common “language” for skills

Over the last few years, we have made meaningful progress on all three aspects of that vision.

As we begin 2019, Degreed is fortunate enough to be engaged with over 200 clients across the globe. We’ve worked with many of you for years, and others are just beginning your relationship with us. Regardless of how long we’ve been partners, we’re deeply grateful for all that you have done to push us to build something great.

With that said, I want to take a moment to recap 2018 and share what we will accomplish in the year ahead.

We continue to advance the roadmap of our industry-leading Learner Experience Platform with major enhancements tied directly to your feedback. This includes a flexible curation framework — to contextualize learning and skills development through pages, roles, and skills plans — a richer learner home experience to increase engagement and connected learning opportunities, user-generated video content capability, alignment of the mobile app and browser experience, and meaningful insights on skills development and content curation for individuals and organizations.

We connected like-minded thought leaders seeking to advance the corporate learning technology experience and facilitated peer-connection forums in numerous locations. As part of that, we have expanded and revamped both our global product council and our client advisory board.

In partnership with many of you, we launched Skill Review to easily create structured data on your workforce’s skill sets, and make that data inter-operable between learning, HR and other systems.

We joined forces with Pathgather, the only other company in the space that shared our commitment to innovation, product excellence, and customer success. Pathgather’s customers are some of the most impressive and innovative teams I’ve met. In just the first two months, many of Pathgather’s best features began to show up on Degreed. Together, we’re building something truly great and lasting in this industry.

We continue to expand our team, product and support capabilities around the globe with four offices worldwide. Around 10% of our 300+ employees are now located outside the United States. Canada, Europe, Latin America, and Asia are among our fastest growing markets

In October, we hosted nearly 400 of you, from 35 states and 12 countries, at our two-day client summit and conference, LENS, in New York City.

We made major investments in all of our Client Success and support capabilities — technical, client engagement, client success, learning, and marketing services — so we can continue to improve how we serve you all along your journeys. This team, which represents our commitment to your success, now accounts for 25% of our company headcount.

Along with our clients Associa, Airbnb, and Mastercard, we were awarded the Gold-level Brandon Hall Excellence in Technology award.

With the help of numerous clients, our CLO Kelly Palmer and Co-Founder and Executive Chairman, David Blake, wrote and published The Expertise Economy.

To better support scaling and inspire innovation, we grew our business, our client base, and our team by more than 100%.

Most importantly, these investments are working. We ended 2018 with a Net Promoter Score of 62, which is world class not just for software vendors, but for any company in any industry.

The Year Ahead

2018 was an incredible year by any measure, but we still have a lot of work to do.

Our biggest priority is continuing to listen to you, our customers. This means continuing to incorporate your feedback and investing in the areas where you’ve pushed us. For starters, we kicked off 2019 by creating new, fully-staffed product and innovation teams focused on four key areas:

Learner Experience and Engagement: To use the vast amount of data we collect to improve our personalization and learner experience.

Native Apps and Extensions: To more deeply tie learning into the flow of work, which creates a more seamless native experience.

Reporting and Insights: To help organizations better identify skill gaps, and provide more meaningful analytics and data on learning activity, content utilization, and skill progression

Skill Measurement and Career Development: To help employees measure their skill levels, identify gaps, and progress in their careers through well-defined paths.

We will also continue investing heavily in our user experience (UX), data science, and AI capabilities, global/multi-language support, search, and integrations and APIs. The goal is to provide a product that supports clients as they build and reinforce a more vibrant and productive learning culture through a consumer-grade experience in an enterprise learning application.

We will work in partnership with you to get deeper integrations into your broader HCM and work systems to make your entire learning, performance, and career ecosystem work better, together. We’ll also work together to use skill data to help you accelerate business transformation, and close critical skill gaps.

Lastly, we’re creating more opportunities for our ever-expanding client base to engage and learn from each other — while continuing to push our roadmap — through over 60 events around the globe. This includes LENS 2019, which will be in Austin, Texas, in October.

My Ask of You

We at Degreed couldn’t be more excited for the year ahead. Together, we have an incredible opportunity to accelerate people’s development and career growth. To create something truly innovative and valuable that helps them build their skills, become truly continuous, lifelong learners, and unlock tremendous value for themselves and your companies, over the entirety of their careers.

Please continue to push us and hold us accountable for doing what we set out to do. I’m looking forward to seeing or meeting as many of you as I can this year. But in the meantime, my personal email address is below. Please feel free to use it.

Thank you again, on behalf of all of us, for a 2018 we won’t soon forget.